The guiding world has become very competitive, I've carved my nitch in the industry by catering to those who do not want a ten hour day on the water, most of my trips are 6 hour days and are very laid back, there's no screaming when mistakes are made, I do my best to praise a good cast and offer encouragement after a bad cast. But what does it take to be a great guide?
Today my client wanted to go some place new, we had fished the Kalama the day before and he'd caught 3 nice steelhead, but his feeling is he'd rather not catch fish on the same river 2 days in a row even if it risked blanking on one of those days. Day 2 would be Blue Creek!
I'm not a fan of the Blue Creek area of the Cowlitz River, it's big, wide, and packed with jet boats. We launched at 6am and floated a half mile downstream before we found room to fish. I'd noticed early on that the dozen or so boats we floated past not a single person was fighting a fish. While I like fishing different water for a day, unlike my client I want fish in the boat.
4 hours into the trip we'd caught a couple spring chinook jacks and some small trout and had not seen or heard of a single steelhead caught.
Now this is where things take a turn. I could see our take out a half mile downstream, there was one more drift to fish before we'd call it a day. A jet boat was coming from down river and pulled up on the gravel bar along side us, there was nothing special about this boat, no flashy decals but I could see the small state required stickers that said he was a guide. His clients got out on shore to stretch their legs while he hefted a large white cooler out of the boat. Oh crap I thought, this is going to hurt. He began pulling fish out and laying them on the gravel, STEELHEAD, STEELHEAD, SPRING CHINOOK, STEELHEAD, a total of 4 summer run steelhead and 2 adult spring chinook. As we floated past he seen the look of horror on my face and recommended we fish a seem just slightly downstream, "theres fish there" he said. We slid into just where he said and fish on!
I met up with this guy at the boat launch as we were taking out, a peak inside his boat revealed only 3 rods, one for each person in the boat, and the brand on those rods, "Ugly Sticks". He asked how we did and I told him we hit one just where he said. "Theres more fish downstream" he said, " let me park my rig and I'll hop in your boat and we'll get your guy on some fish" he added.
Now we didn't take him up on his offer, me client had to get home to family obligations and I'll admit to being a little to proud. But this guy was a guide, he didn't hide behind a fancy name brands or a boat covered in sponsor logos, he was not arrogant in any means, and yet he'd put his people on more fish that morning then I'd seen in all the other "Guide Boats" combined.
